


i have dug this grave for two

by radialarch



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Pining, Post-Episode: s01e11 The Black Paladin, emergency removal of a prosthetic limb, weapons-grade repression of everyone's feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 06:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8001757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what Keith promises himself: both of them will make it out of this. [Post-S1]</p>
            </blockquote>





	i have dug this grave for two

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to idrilka, who read through this and also, miraculously, let me shout at her about plot points at all times of day. You're a wonder. And to everyone who read this in-progress and kept me going; you know who you are.

### part i.

There’s this memory Keith has, of walking into the ocean. It’s mostly fragments: the prickle of sun on his head and shoulders, the brush of water across his legs. He’d waded out into the blue, the sand sliding between his toes, and suddenly — the ground had gone.

Water in his eyes and nose, and not even time enough to scream. He could see the sky, just beyond the fractured surface of the sea, but it might as well have been light-years away.

Then: a strong pair of arms, lifting him up high above the waves and carrying him back to shore.

It’s the only memory he has of his mother.

———

Someone is screaming.

“Shiro!” Keith shouts. "Are you okay?”

His lion is shaking hard enough to rattle his bones; he can hear the sound of metal screeching under load. He grimly wrestles with the controls. He knows what this is.

One of the worst thing that can happen to a ship is itself. Stress it wrong, hit it at just the right frequency, and the ship will amplify the forces a thousandfold. Unchecked, the ship literally can shake itself to pieces.

“The arm,” Shiro gasps out, “it won’t—” before his words dissolve back into agony.

The black lion is on Keith’s right, tumbling away. He grits his teeth, plants his feet at the base of the control panel, and _pulls_.

The lion will give, or he will.

For a long moment he thinks it’ll be him; he nearly pulls his arms out of their sockets, wrenching at the controls. And then, something: a shift in the tension, a quirk of space-time. The lion comes out of it shuddering, but whole, alive, and leaps toward Shiro like a bullet.

By now, Shiro’s stopped screaming. There’s only an uneasy silence in the comms, and the black lion doesn’t respond even when the red lion fits itself against its belly.

“Hang on,” he tells Shiro anyway. “I'm gonna get us out of here.”

The scans pick up a small planet maybe two hours away. It’s got water, a breathable atmosphere, and a survivable range of surface temperatures. And, most importantly: no trace of aerospace activity. If the Galra are chasing them, they haven’t come here yet.

“Okay,” he says, and squares his shoulders. “C’mon, Red.”

———

The trip takes closer to four; the black lion is dead weight, and Keith is jumpy. His third time sheltering in the shadow of a moon, his nerves frayed to pieces, he thinks wistfully about the green lion.

“Should’ve asked Pidge about those modifications,” he mutters. “Cloaking would be real useful right about now.”

The others — he’s been trying not to think about them, but now the worries crowd in thick and fast. Lance is an idiot, and Hunk doesn’t believe in himself enough. Pidge is too easy to distract. None of them are as careful as they should be; they trust too soon.

“They’ll be fine,” he tells himself. “Allura will find them.”

Right. The same Allura who’d told them the black bayard was missing; who’d never even thought to mention that the same Zarkon they were fighting had once been a paladin.

He rubs his face with one hand. He wants, very badly, to talk to Shiro.

But if Shiro is —

 _No_. Keith cuts off the thought half-formed. He will get them to the ground, he will carve his way into the black lion if he has to, and Shiro will _live_.

His hands are shaking. His lion sends him waves of worry.

“It’s nothing,” he tells the lion. “Let’s get down there.”

———

Keith does a cursory scan as they enter the planet’s sphere of influence and heads straight for the nearest inland body of water. The angle of reentry might be a bit tight, but he’s done worse in the simulator.

He realizes too late to account for atmospheric density; they’re already hitting the ionosphere. It’s an amateur mistake, one that Shiro never would’ve made.

He can’t dwell on that now. The lions are dropping fast, and it’s all Keith can do to keep the nose steady, the forepaws tucked clean.

The black lion, draped across the red lion’s back, doesn’t have that advantage. It’s not angled right, only anchored by the red lion’s jaw around one foreleg, and slipping further despite Keith’s efforts; and then they slice through the cloud cover and it wrenches free with a shriek.

For a moment, Keith can only see the bright glow of ionized gas. And then, below him: the black lion falling, graceless.

They’re already going too fast; Keith can hear a faint whine starting up in the hull. He ignores it.

 _Hold on, Shiro_.

They catch the black lion maybe twenty thousand feet up. There’s no time to think; Keith rams the lion from beneath, fires up all his jets at once.

He’s braced for the impact, but still it slams into him like a wave: all the air punched from his chest, and his vision washed out to gray. He tries to gasp and only manages a high, thin wheeze, while his ribcage flattens itself against his spine.

There’s darkness creeping up at the corner of his vision, a rush in his ears. For a moment, Keith thinks, distantly, of the sea.

But the sound grows and grows, and it has his lion’s voice. A long, endless roar, until he can’t tell anymore what’s inside his head and out.

The lake’s edge; a flash of sand. They’re still coming in too fast and listing badly but the miracle is that they’re coming in at all.

It turns out Keith has energy left enough to grin. _Thanks, Red. Owe you one._

 

 

### part ii.

In the end, Keith has to break out of the lion through the emergency hatch.

The drop to the ground is awkward, and his legs go out from under him as he lands. He picks himself up impatiently, yanking off his helmet, and then sees the body.

The black lion must have — spit Shiro out, or something, because he’s on the ground some distance from his lion. Almost to the lakeshore, really, with his back to Keith.

He’s not moving.

“Shiro!”

The sand here is loose, shifting with every step; Keith half-sprints, half-stumbles toward him, is nearly out of breath by the time he falls to his knees by Shiro’s side.

“C’mon,” he pleads. Shiro’s gotten bulkier in the shoulders, and it takes some effort to turn him over. “Not like this, not after everything.”

The first thing Keith notices is that Shiro is breathing. The second, that his arm is burning white-hot.

“What,” he says, panicked, “okay, uh, hang on.”

It takes Keith a minute to slide the gauntlet from Shiro’s forearm, then he gropes through his belt pouch. Altean medkits aren’t extensive, but even they’ve got painkillers. Shake the vial, wait for the liquid to turn clear; inject into the muscle of Shiro’s arm. It takes him three tries because he can’t keep his hand steady.

Then he wrestles Shiro into the lake.

It’s freezing; there’s the hiss of water as the arm goes under, and, a moment later, the curling wisps of steam. He maneuvers the two of them so Shiro’s half-floating, leaning against Keith’s chest, and tries to think. He has to — what? Turn the arm off? The arm’s paneled in spots, but it’s not like there’s a power button he can see. Shiro’s never talked about anything like that.

He wishes he’d asked Shiro more about the arm. He wishes —

“Wake up,” he says, voice cracking. “Shiro, please. I need you.”

It’s the second time in his life he’s said that out loud. Shiro doesn’t answer this time, either.

———

By the time the arm cools down enough to touch, Shiro is shockingly pale. Keith sets his teeth, trying to stop their chattering, and starts to feel his way across the surface of the metal. A switch; a control panel. There’s gotta be _something_.

Keith’s prodding around the seam where the arm meets flesh when Shiro stirs.

A slow blink, his gaze still a little clouded, and then Shiro says, “Hey.”

Keith is, momentarily, struck dumb by the sweep of Shiro’s eyelashes. A million miles from home, under an alien sky, and Shiro alive is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

He clears his throat. “Your arm,” he says. “Is there a way to shut it down?”

Shiro winces, struggling upright. Keith takes a step back to give him room and immediately feels the chill settling into his bones. He hadn’t realized how much Shiro’s body had been keeping him warm.

“For a while,” Shiro says, gingerly flexing his elbow. "It’ll reboot, but at least we can buy some time.” He looks at Keith. "How long have you been out here?”

“Not that long,” Keith lies.

“Right.” Shiro gives him a wry, thin grin, and gently pushes him toward the shore. "Might be easier to work somewhere dry. I’m gonna need your help.”

———

“There’s some kind of panel behind the elbow,” Shiro says. "For when they had to do maintenance. A little hard for me to reach, but you should be able to pry it open.”

The placement isn’t ideal, but after a couple of tries they settle on Shiro’s head tipped against Keith’s knee and his arm stretched out above his head. With the two of them facing out toward the sun, there are no shadows to get in the way.

The arm’s starting to heat up again, Keith notices. There’s a hum somewhere inside, and when he presses his palm to the surface — it feels dangerous.

The panel’s well-hidden; it takes a while for Keith to find it, even with Shiro’s direction. The grooves marking it out are paper-thin, and he has to run his fingers over them twice just to make sure.

“Got it,” Keith says, reaching for his knife, and Shiro —

Under his hand, Shiro’s shoulder goes very, very tense.

“Shiro,” Keith says, appalled he never thought to ask. "Can you — feel things with the arm?”

Shiro’s nostrils flare white; for a moment, he says nothing. Then, with a determined tilt of his jaw: “Just do it.”

“Are you crazy?” Keith says. "There’s gotta be — painkillers, I can —”

“It doesn’t work,” Shiro says, flat. "The rest of me, maybe, but not this.”

“Shiro —”

“Keith,” Shiro says. “I'm not asking.”

It’s the first time Shiro’s ever pulled rank on him, and Keith is still holding the knife. Despite everything, maybe there was a part of him that had understood — that had taken in all the facts and coldly, dispassionately agreed with what Shiro would say.

The knife’s sheath is leather. Still smooth. Thick. He’s taken good care of it.

He unhooks it from his belt and offers it to Shiro. Shiro doesn’t look at him when he takes it.

The teeth marks don’t come out of the leather for a long, long time.

———

After:

After Keith _finishes the job_ and walks away and heaves up the contents of his stomach, while Shiro pretends he can’t hear him;

After Shiro struggles to his feet with his arm hanging uselessly at his side, and Keith doesn’t offer up a hand he’s not sure Shiro would take;

After everything, Shiro straightens up and asks, with only the faintest strain in his voice, “Where are we?”

It’s better, to focus on the more important things. "I don’t know,” he says. "The planets around here look like they’re empty. The radio hasn’t picked up anything from the others. Whatever the Galra did to the wormhole, it must’ve really messed things up.”

“Allura’s the only one who can find the lions,” Shiro mutters. "But we shouldn’t count on that. She and Coran could be in trouble. Even if they’re not, it might take them months to find us.”

“I don’t think we should stay here for long,” Keith agrees. "But I'm gonna need some time to get Red flight-ready. Between Zarkon and coming here, it took a lot of damage.”

“Sure,” Shiro says. "Why don’t you go figure out what kind of repairs it needs? I'll go through the black lion and check our supplies. We’re probably going have to eat something, even if it’s just freeze-dried food goo.”

That last part Shiro says with a smile, like he’s offering up an olive branch. Keith thinks maybe he should say something about the arm — the way it’s _present_ between them, like a ticking time bomb — but after what he just did he can’t bring himself to mention it.

In the end, all he says is, “Okay.” It feels a little like running away.

———

In Keith’s head, the red lion is yowling at the top of its lungs.

“I know, I'm sorry,” Keith says, patting the dashboard. "You did good out there, buddy. Let me fix you up.”

The lion pauses, briefly contemplative, then continues on at full volume. Keith resigns himself to the headache forming behind his eyes and goes down to examine the fuel cells.

On the final list of urgent repairs:

  * three sections of cracked pipes, and half a dozen joins that need resealing
  * one of the gyroscopes nearly torn from its mount
  * extensive damage to the heat panels, especially around the lion’s head and shoulders
  * a miscellany of burnt out circuit boards
  * and at least two sections of the hull that probably won’t be able to withstand the stress of flight



Keith mentally revises his initial estimate of _days_ to _weeks_ , and groans.

Hunk might have enjoyed this; he’s happier working on the ground than inside the cockpit. Pidge would’ve seen it as an opportunity for all her endless tinkering and improvements. But Keith —

Well, he’s always liked to fly.

He doesn’t even know if he’ll be able to fix everything. He’s not an engineer. He did all right at the garrison, because it was the only way they’d let him in the pilot’s seat, and sometimes Shiro would —

The point is, alien ship repair has never been high on Keith’s list of priorities.

But things are different now: the ground beneath their feet, the air in their lungs. Even Keith, though sometimes Shiro seems to think he’s the only one who’s changed.

The lion is whining at him softly. Keith settles between its ears, just for a moment, to watch the sun go down.

“Don’t worry,” he tells the lion, patting the broad bridge of its nose. “I'm gonna get us all home, I promise.”

When he gets back down to the ground, Shiro is waiting.

“Keith,” he says. "There’s a problem.”

 

 

### part iii.

“What do you mean, your lion’s not responding?” Keith says. "Like a malfunction? Maybe the crash broke something.”

Shiro shakes his head. "The lion’s actually in pretty good shape, thanks to you.” He’s trying to set up some sort of portable campfire thing, one-handed, until Keith takes it from him; without the distraction, he looks a little lost. "I felt it when we were falling through the wormhole. It’s like the lion was — rejecting me, shutting me out. I thought maybe if I tried again, but —”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Keith says, squinting at the labels. The light keeps flickering, but the settings are all in Altean and he’s only picked up a few symbols so far. "Allura said the lions choose their pilot, and this one chose you. Unless Zarkon did something —”

Keith stops, abruptly. The lion _had_ chosen a pilot, long before Shiro.

“When I was fighting Zarkon, he said that he was the original Black Paladin,” he says, thinking. "What if —”

He must’ve pressed something right, because the fire lights up right then, bright and steady under his hands. In the clear light, he can see the exact moment Shiro goes stiff with horror.

“ _Zarkon_ was the Black Paladin?”

“Shiro, _no_ ,” Keith says, “whatever you’re thinking, it’s not —”

“They were right,” Shiro says, ruthless. “I've been — the lion must have sensed it, some kind of corruption inside me.” He looks down at his arm, lying motionless in his lap, and his voice is like glass when he says, “I never should’ve been able to fly it to begin with.”

Keith isn’t — he’s not _good_ at this, at fixing people. Between the two of them, it’s always been the other way around, Shiro telling him what he needs to hear.

“Shiro,” he says anyway, the truest thing he knows. "If anyone’s worthy of flying a Voltron lion, it’s you.”

Shiro’s mouth goes tight, then he looks away. Keith doesn’t know how to say it so Shiro will believe him.

———

Shiro’s arm is still out of commission in the morning.

“I don’t know how long it’ll take,” Shiro admits. "They didn’t always reboot it right away, but —” He shrugs. "Some days it was hard to keep track of time.”

“They could’ve used some kind of remote control,” Keith suggests, determinedly not thinking about that last part. "Maybe it won’t happen this time.”

“Maybe,” Shiro repeats, looking dubious. "Look, don’t worry about it, all right? Go fix your lion, that’s your first priority.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“My jetpack’s damaged,” he says. He’s got his armor disassembled, parts spread neatly on a tray. "Thought I'd work on that for a while.”

“You sure you’re gonna be okay?” Keith asks. "You know, with the —” He gestures at the arm.

Shiro smiles, lopsided. "They didn’t give me the arm right away,” he says. "I learned how to do a lot of things.”

Keith nods, jerky, and walks away. He’s not thinking about it. He’s _not_ —

The lion whines at him, worried, as he steps inside.

“It’s okay,” he says. Breathes. "It’s fine.”

He’s going to fix the lion, and then he’s going to get them out.

(He is not thinking about —)

———

They’ve been sleeping in their lions, or trying, at least. They leave the comms open, and most nights Keith can hear Shiro on the other end, the uneven breathing of someone who’s not quite asleep. He’s pretty sure Shiro knows he’s not getting much sleep, either.

“This is stupid,” Shiro says on the third day. "We’re up half the night worrying about each other, and if either of us _does_ need help being in a nonfunctioning lion won’t help anyway.”

“You got a better idea?” Keith says.

“Well,” Shiro says. "The weather’s been pretty good.”

They end up digging out some kind of tarp from deep in storage. Keith does most of the work, securing a line to a nearby outcropping of rock and securing all the edges, and waves Shiro off when he looks guilty about it.

“I took the same survival course you did,” he tells him. "Might as well use garrison training for something.”

He sets up the tent facing the lake, away from the breeze that kicks up at night. Afterwards, Shiro ducks into it first, cautious, and makes a pleased sound when he finds there’s room enough for him to stand up.

“I thought I was gonna have to spend a lot more time on my knees,” he says. "This is nice.”

Keith chokes. Shiro realizes what he’s said half a second after and goes very pink.

“You haven’t changed _that_ much,” Keith says, and his voice only comes out a little strangled. "I know you.”

Then he flees, and spends a good ten minutes trying to stop thinking about Shiro’s mouth.

———

The planet’s swinging into summer; the days get longer, hotter, and they’re shedding layers of clothing one by one. Shiro strips down to his vest, his feet bare; Keith gets into the habit of doing repairs with his shirt tossed aside, and pays the price by acquiring a vicious sunburn one afternoon while replacing the front heat panels.

“You didn’t think this was a bad idea?” Shiro asks, laughter in his voice. "Stay still.”

“I had other things to worry about,” Keith snaps, then hisses at the brush of Shiro’s fingers against his neck. "Ow!”

“Sorry,” Shiro says. "Hair’s getting long. Hang on.” Keith hears him rummaging around, before Shiro says, “Aha.”

“Tell me it’s a painkiller,” Keith says, waving an arm. "What else is even in there?”

“I don’t think this is actually for sunburns,” Shiro says thoughtfully. "Can Alteans even get sunburned? But it should help.”

A moment later, something cool touches Keith’s skin. Some kind of — balm? lotion? Keith doesn’t really care. Shiro’s hand is moving in firm strokes over his back, and the sting is starting to fade where he touches.

“Oh my god,” he mumbles into his forearm. "This is a miracle. Y _ou’re_ a miracle.”

Shiro slows a fraction. "I think it’s chemistry, actually,” he says, casual, but when Keith twists around to glare at him, he’s grinning.

It’s been a long time since they’ve been like this: content, without the weight of all the universe pressing down on their shoulders. Keith drops his head back down and says, “You know, if I had to get stranded on an alien planet, I'm glad it was with you.”

Shiro’s thumb is rubbing carefully beneath Keith’s shoulder blade. "Yeah,” he says after a moment. "Me too.”

 

 

### part iv.

A few weeks in, two things happen at once: Shiro wakes up to find his arm’s rebooted itself, and —

Outside, there’s grass sprouting up, all around the lions.

“Where did this come from?” Keith asks. "The scans never picked up any kind of life on this planet.”

Shiro kneels down by the black lion’s paw, rubs a blade of grass between his fingers. "Maybe that’s not the right question,” he says. "Why _haven’t_ we seen anything grow around here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this planet’s got water and air and —” He waves at the new growth. "All the conditions were right. How did that happen?”

The garrison had a mandatory course on geophysics, because they wanted their pilots to quickly identify planets with potential for life. Keith never had much interest in it, and the instructors were more focused on the _what_ than the _how_ , anyway.

“Couldn’t we just have brought it over by accident?” Keith suggests. "Look, I'm pretty sure I saw those plants by Red on Arus.”

“No, they’re the same,” Shiro says absently. "These ones just haven’t grown as much. I guess yours are wilder, kind of uncontrolled. You can see they’re growing in patches.”

Something about Shiro’s words stirs up a faint memory. “Shiro,” Keith says, urgent. "Do you remember what Allura said about the lions? That first time, when she told us about them.”

“She said —” Shiro looks puzzled. "The quintessence of the lion would mirror the pilot’s. I guess that’s how the lion would know who to choose.”

“When you and Allura were at that hidden base,” Keith says. "There was some kind of warehouse. These giant containers full of this weird — substance. One of the guards there called it quintessence.”

“These plants must’ve already been here,” Shiro says out loud, thinking. "Seeds, or something. But they needed this quintessence to grow. And then we came — two lions, each with a different type of quintessence —”

“Shiro,” Keith says. "If the Galra are taking quintessence from planets —” He almost can’t say it. "That means they’ve been here before.”

Shiro gets to his feet. Even from several feet away, Keith can still hear the mad whirling of his arm.

“Yes.”

———

“You have to leave,” Shiro says. "I know the red lion’s almost ready. Go find the others. Tell them what we know.”

“And leave you here for the Galrans?” Keith says. "No way. Red can take both of us.”

“But not the black lion,” Shiro says. "You told me it took hours to get here, and that’s without a fleet of Galra fighters on your tail. You’d have no maneuverability and no support, it’s a death wish. And I'm not leaving a dangerous weapon here for the Galra to find.”

“So the Galra can have the black lion _and_ you?” Keith says. "Like that’d make it better somehow?”

“Keith —”

“When you were gone,” Keith says, and Shiro goes very quiet. "When the commander held a meeting and confirmed it, not just rumors floating around the barracks — I went out and stole one of the MP speedsters.”

“You did what?”

“It could’ve been worse.” Keith shrugs. "I could’ve stolen a plane. I just — wanted to fly. Not the simulator, you know it never feels right.”

“Yeah,” Shiro says softly. "I know.”

“So I took it into the hills and flew,” Keith says. "Stayed until the fuel ran out. But it wasn’t the same. Like something was missing.”

“Keith.”

“I — can’t,” Keith says, a confession. "I won’t leave you here, don’t ask me to.”

For a moment, Shiro just looks at him. Then he closes his eyes.

“All right,” Shiro says, his mouth a wry twist. "Both of us, or not at all.”

———

“I think,” Shiro says, “you’re gonna have to remove the arm.”

Keith swallows. "I —”

“Listen,” Shiro says. "At the Galra base, they knew who I was when I interfaced with their systems. I think — part of the reason they gave it to me is so they could track me down. Suppression and retrieval. It makes sense.”

The Galra had done this to him. They’d taken him and marked him like — like some kind of property, like they owned him; and all this time, he’d had to carry that with him, an inescapable reminder.

“I'll walk you through it,” Shiro says, trying to grin, and Keith thinks about Shiro’s white face, all those nights Shiro pretended he could sleep and Keith did too, and says, “Okay.”

———

When he’s finished, Keith’s palms are slippery with blood. Shiro stays conscious the entire time, and Keith doesn’t know which would’ve been worse.

———

“You have to take this,” Keith tells his lion. "Somewhere far from here. Destroy it, okay? Throw it into the sun if you have to. And then — go find the others. They need you.”

The lion lays its head on its paws and fixes Keith with its eyes, whining.

“Listen,” Keith says, stroking its nose. "You can do this, buddy. You’re smarter than the Galra; they’ll never get you out there. But you gotta go before they find us.”

The lion whuffs, a long, deep breath.

“I know,” Keith says. "But Shiro — I can’t leave him here, Red. He doesn’t have anyone else.”

The lion is motionless for a moment, and then it moves; delicately, it picks up the arm between its jaws and stretches to its feet. One last look at Keith, before it’s bounding upward, into the sky.

Keith stands there, looking up, until he can no longer feel the lion curled in the back of his head. He thinks this might be the last time he’ll know what it’s really like to fly.

———

The sun goes down, but neither of them can sleep. Instead, they stretch out on the ground and look up at the starlit sky.

“You think any of these are ones we know?” Keith asks. "All these stars — we’ve gotta have seen one of them back on earth.”

He can feel Shiro shifting beside him. "I don’t know,” he says, “the universe is a big place.” Then he nudges his shoulder into Keith’s. "Look. That one looks like a lion.”

Keith frowns up into the night. "I don’t see it,” he says after a moment. "Where am I supposed to be looking?”

“Here,” Shiro says, and wraps his hand around Keith’s. "That’s the head, there. Four paws. And it’s got a long tail, like this.”

He draws Keith’s finger through the air, and under his touch, the sky comes alive; not the stars tumbled in chaos after all, but a map.

Shiro’s always shown him where to go.

“Shiro,” Keith says, turning to look at him. "I — you should know —”

Shiro’s still staring up at the sky. "Yeah,” he says, and his hand is still warm on Keith’s. "I know.”

Keith’s heart is hammering in his throat. "But what if —”

“I don’t — not like this,” Shiro says, and it takes Keith a moment to realize: Shiro is scared. "Save it for when we make it out of this, all right?”

“When we make it out,” Keith says, and almost believes it. "Pidge is gonna have a fit.”

“She’ll probably strip your lion and start over,” Shiro agrees. "Think Hunk’ll have found something nice to eat?”

“Probably just more food goo. But honestly? I'd be okay with that.”

“A little less excitement,” Shiro says, wistful. "Sounds nice.”

He’s still holding Keith’s hand when they finally fall asleep.

———

The next morning, the Galra come for them: a squadron of fighter jets, approaching in tight formation.

Keith has his bayard, and his knife; Shiro, without the arm, has nothing at all.

“You should take the knife,” Keith says quietly.

Shiro doesn’t point out that it’s his right hand that’s missing; that they might both die before he could even use the knife. He wraps his left hand around the handle and says, “You ready?”

Keith grins. "As I'll ever be.”

The fighters are coming down, low over the lake. Six of them, armed to the teeth, against the two of them and the unmoving form of the black lion.

“Surrender now and you may be allowed to live,” the Galra broadcast over their speakers. "Resist, and you shall be destroyed.”

Keith watches Shiro’s hand tighten its grip and shouts, “Come down here and find out how many we’ll take with us!”

A pause, then someone laughs. "Oh, I will enjoy this.”

There’s a flash of light from the leftmost fighter. Keith instinctively brings his bayard up, is slammed backwards. He comes out of it panting, his wrists feeling bruised down to the bones; but one of the fighters is going down, a wing sliced straight through.

The Galra commander isn’t laughing now. The jets bear down upon them. Keith glances over his shoulder and asks, desperately, “Shiro. Was it worth it?”

“Yes,” Shiro says, unhesitating. "It was.”

Keith reaches out —

The jets fire —

Something roars.

The black lion is standing over them, the Galra fire bouncing harmlessly off its flank. “Shiro!” Keith yells over the noise. "What’s going on?”

Shiro looks at the stump of his arm, then looks back. "The lion says it can talk to me again,” he yells back in amazement. "I think — the others are coming.”

The red lion’s the first to arrive, snatching a Galra fighter out of the air in its jaws, then the comms burst into life.

“Me and Blue to the rescue,” Lance is whooping. "Hello, Galra empire, you have met. your. match.”

“Leave some for the rest of us,” Pidge complains. "I gotta test out the new shock beams.”

“Uh, guys,” Hunk says, "I don’t know if this steering thing is working so well —”

The yellow lion crashes into two fighters at once. The fighters go down in flames; the lion lurches, turns, and manages to land on its haunches.

“I totally meant to do that,” Hunk says. "Is that it? is that all of them?”

Shiro’s laughing, wild and clear. "Yeah, Hunk,” he says. "That’s all of them. You did it.”

There’s an Altean battleship hovering in the air, and Keith knows that there’s still a war to fight, that they’re going to have to lay down what they know and ask for answers. But right now, he’s still breathing and Shiro is too, and that’s good enough for him.

“We made it,” Shiro says, pulling Keith in close. He’s got his hand on the back of Keith’s neck, his forehead to Keith’s. “Keith, I —”

And Keith reaches up, presses his mouth to Shiro’s — kisses him, until they’re both breathless, and Shiro’s looking at him with his eyes very bright.

“You said,” Keith mumbles, suddenly uncertain. "When we got out of this.”

The comms are full of noise — someone says, “Keith, dude, you’ve got the _worst_ timing” — but the only thing Keith cares about is this: Shiro, alive, and grinning like the sun. "Yeah,” he says. “I did, didn’t I.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] i have dug this grave for two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9220166) by [sisi_rambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisi_rambles/pseuds/sisi_rambles)




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